From Lisa – Creative Mess, Organized Chaos

In college, I lived with a visual arts major and a computer programming major, and ongoing fights over the messiness vs. “clutter” of the house would fairly often ensue– the computer programmer wanting the house to be clean and orderly, and the visual artist arguing it is clean, just appropriately cluttered. As the theatre major, who was studying both the artistic and management side, I would often find myself in between the two arguments, easily able to see both sides.

I was reminded of this as I walked through the office today, seeing the leftover creative chaos that is/was Young Playwrights Festival. With ten short plays being produced over four short weeks in our relatively small space, it’s pretty much impossible not to be bursting at the seams. The back porch and parking lot became the paint studios, with the remnants of layers and layers of painted prop and set piece outlines now left. The rehearsal room (in between rehearsals, that is) became Cardboard Capital for cutting and fabricating – the coveted floral-patterned box cutter bouncing from hand to hand as former moving boxes transformed into African backdrops, leaf props, and video game signs. Even the café and upper lobby became second spaces for set, prop, and costume creation. Days after the Festival, the evidence can still be found… a scrap of cardboard or bit of fabric not caught by the broom or vacuum cleaner yet, a random paintbrush that hasn’t found its way back home.

The week after the Festival is for “wrap up” – time to make notes of what worked well or not so well, so we can improve next year; to thank the many, many people who made it all happen; and to clean up the space and get ready for the next, hopefully less space-demanding and messy project. The part of me who “sided” with my computer programmer roommate loves the resetting and reorganizing of the space, but the side of me who understood the need for a little mess when creating art loves the creative chaos that is YPF Time.